Saturday, December 13, 2008

Playstation@Home

They finally got something out. Beta version. You might see me dinking about today on that Saucer Pop game, though not terribly often. Not much to do on there yet, but if you feel like chatting, I can do that.

...And at 12:28, I've already heard my first racist comment from someone's Bluetooth. Just noticed some chess tables in the mall, and someone commented, "Why them n-----s playing chess? To make 'em feel smarter?" Ick.

No matter what they say, it's really just a ripoff of second life, but sadly not a very good one. They are literally marketting it as a way for us to get stuff advertised to us. Further, they are marketting the fact that we have to pay for all these clothing addons, not a wit of which I'll actually be buying.

That said, I'm compulsive so during the closed beta I downloaded every bit of free stuff I could.

One annoying thing is there's a number of cheap little games they've put in there that I'm barely ever going to actually play, what with the idiotic "realistic" waiting in line mechanic they've got going.

As of right now, there's a pretty small selection of meeting spots, and the interactions are fairly limited too. It'll do for now. I mean all these avatar based chat rooms remind me of V-Chat, but honestly it's missing a lot. Namely, no custom desinged rooms or anything like that, also I can't fly. That's a losing point right there.

Down the line I'm sure they'll add more, and charge for every last part of it.

Eh, they really should have just set up a Second Life client for the system and integrated some PSN support in there, like they did with Folding@home.

I've yet to see any racists running around, but when other people talk about running into them all the time, it gives me two thoughts. One, that there's a lot of closet racists out there that are more open when "anonymous" online, and that in general I've grossly underestimated the issue of modern racism, and second that I hope that it's "merely" people doing it purely as some stupid joke or for "shock value".

Generally what I'm probably getting at with the racist comment was the sort of rudeness and immaturity I've heard about with FPS games that have bluetooth: Most of the chatter comes from teenagers with potty mouths, complaining about n00bs.

I imagine I just got "lucky", since it was the unusual situation of watching people line up to play on 3 chess tables. Most people just tended to wander and/or type starred-out F-bombs or something. Kept seeing "****o" in chat windows.

I'm not sure how many of those people are actually using wireless headsets. I myself use wired headsets and intend on sticking to that. I can't justify owning a battery powered anything that I never intend on taking more than 10 feet from where I keep it.

With mouse and keyboard, especially keyboard, I simply don't see why they'd waste their money on something they will almost never ever move from their own desk.

With game controllers, I can see it a little better, but I myself actually have one of those rechargable battery packs for my 360 controller. I thought it was convenient and also could be charged through that controller to USB adapter. Well, what do you know? It turns out that the cord is long enough that I NEVER UNPLUG THE THING! I play it as though it was a wired controller and honestly can't tell the difference. The PS3 controller is different considering how short that USB cable is, but if I ever picked up a longer one I'd probably end up never unplugging it either.

The Wii controller is different enough that if I could plug it in, it would actually be awkward. That said, I have to ask when Nintendo is going to release some official recharging batteries. Li-ion preferably. I'm sick of these Nickel-Cadmium knockoffs that lose the ability to hold a charge on day 10.

Back to headsets, considering that the 360 headset included with the system plugs into the controller itself, and I could make that controller wireless any time I wanted, I fail to see any reason to make that thing wireless. Penny Arcade kinda covered that pretty well I think.

I tend to favor cutting down on wires because I don't like tangles, and wires add to stuff I have to handle when cleaning up.

I can appreciate the hassles of handling extra batteries, though. I got a wireless PS2 controller a while back, and dealing with it getting twitchy when the batteries get low, recharging, and so forth was pretty bad, too. For my Wii controllers, I got a recharge station and rechargeable battery packs that go with it.

On another note, I played a bit of Mega Man 2 today on my NES. That controller feels a lot smaller than it used to.